How to get Drive's information in VB.NET

We are very familiar with drive properties in operating system, through drive properties

We can gain important information of selected drive such as used space, free space, file system….

We can also create drive property page in vb.net by using Driveinfo class of System.IO namespaces.



User can determine what drives are available and capacity and available free space on the drive. System.IO.DriveInfo provides various methods and properties for handling above discussed task these are as follows:

Methods :

Name	Description
Equals(Object)	Determines whether the specified Object is equal to the current Object.
Finalize	Allows an Object to attempt to free resources and perform other cleanup operations before the Object is reclaimed by garbage collection.
GetDrives	Retrieves the drive names of all logical drives on a computer.
GetHashCode	Serves as a hash function for a particular type
GetType	Gets the Type of the current instance
MemberwiseClone	Creates a shallow copy of the current Object.
ToString	Returns a drive name as a string.

Properties :
 

Name	Description
AvailableFreeSpace	Indicates the amount of available free space on a drive.
DriveFormat	Gets the name of the file system, such as NTFS or FAT32.
DriveType	Gets the drive type.
IsReady	Gets a value indicating whether a drive is ready.
Name	Gets the name of a drive.
RootDirectory	Gets the root directory of a drive.
TotalFreeSpace	Gets the total amount of free space available on a drive.
TotalSize	Gets the total size of storage space on a drive.
VolumeLabel	Gets or sets the volume label of a drive.

Code :

Add new window form and add some controls Labels, Groupboxes,buton(see picture)

 

Create load event of form, selectedindexChanged event of combox and paint event of groupbox on where chart is shown.

Now first we need to bind all available drive's name in combo box like this

   Private Sub Form1_Load(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles MyBase.Load

        Dim drives As System.IO.DriveInfo() = System.IO.DriveInfo.GetDrives

        For i As Integer = 0 To drives.Length - 1

            cmbCombo.Items.Add(drives(i).ToString)

        Next

        cmbCombo.SelectedIndex = -1

    End Sub

For showing various information regarding selected drive we need to write this code on SelectedIndexChanged event of combo box:

            Dim Drive_Info As System.IO.DriveInfo

            Drive_Info = New System.IO.DriveInfo(cmbCombo.Text)

            lblName.Text = Drive_Info.Name

            If Drive_Info.IsReady Then

                If Drive_Info.VolumeLabel.Length > 0 Then

                    lblVolumeLabel.Text = Drive_Info.VolumeLabel

                 

                    lblVolumeLabel.Text = "None"

                End If

                lblFileSystem.Text = Drive_Info.DriveFormat

                lblType.Text = Drive_Info.DriveType

                lblRootDir.Text = Drive_Info.RootDirectory.FullName

                lblCapacity.Text = Drive_Info.TotalSize & " (Bytes)"

                lblAvalspace.Text = Drive_Info.TotalFreeSpace & " (Bytes)"

                Dim usedSpace As Long

                usedSpace = Drive_Info.TotalSize - Drive_Info.TotalFreeSpace

                lblUsedSpace.Text = usedSpace & " (Bytes)"

                Dim ProgressCurrentValue As Integer = usedSpace * 100 / Drive_Info.TotalSize

              End If

 

We can also use Pie chart for showing used and free space in drive by various color using paint event and FillPie method of graphices class like this

Private Sub GroupBox3_Paint(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.Windows.Forms.PaintEventArgs) Handles GroupBox3.Paint

        Dim rect As Rectangle = New Rectangle(130, 50, 120, 50)

        If IsInfoAvailiable Then

            e.Graphics.FillPie(Brushes.Fuchsia, rect, 0, Piemark)

            e.Graphics.FillPie(Brushes.Blue, rect, Piemark, 360 - Piemark)

            Application.DoEvents()

        End If

    End Sub